The AP story noted that “half a dozen research groups gave new results on various experimental tests, including one that seems 88% accurate at indicating Alzheimer’s risk.” And Richard Hodes, MD, Director of the National Institute on Aging, told AP, “In the past year, we’ve seen a dramatic acceleration in progress [on Alzheimer’s tests]. This has happened at a pace that is far faster than any of us would have expected.”

This could be a boon for medical laboratories seeking way to contribute more value to patient care. Especially among Alzheimer’s patients, who account for as many as 70% of all dementia cases.

Plasma Biomarker for Predicting Alzheimer’s

One of the experimental blood tests presented at the AAIC involved a 2018 study into “the potential clinical utility of plasma biomarkers in predicting brain amyloid-β burden at an individual level. These plasma biomarkers also have cost-benefit and scalability advantages over current techniques, potentially enabling broader clinical access and efficient population screening,” the researchers stated an article they published in Nature.

AP also reported that Japanese scientists at the AAIC
presented results of a validation test conducted on 201 people who had either
Alzheimer’s, other types of dementia, or little or no symptoms. They found that
the test “correctly identified 92% of people who had Alzheimer’s and correctly
ruled out 85% who did not have it, for an overall accuracy of 88%.”

Akinori Nakamura, MD, PhD, of the National Center for
Geriatrics and Gerontology in Obu, Japan, was a member of the research team and
first author of the research paper. He told the AP that the test results “closely
matched those from the top tests used now—three types of brain scans and a
mental assessment exam.”

Eric McDade, DO (above), Associate Professor of Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis, told Neurology Today, “The results reported here provide a relatively high level of confidence given that this is a relatively well characterized population with an amyloid PET scan to provide confirmation of a significant level of amyloid plaque burden in the brain.” Could this level of physician confidence lead to a clinical laboratory test based on the plasma biomarker? (Photo copyright: Washington University.)

Koichi Tanaka is a Japanese engineer who won the Nobel prize winner for chemistry. He heads the Koichi Tanaka Research Lab at Shimadzu Corp. (OTCMKTS:SHMZF) in Kyoto, Japan, and was on the team that developed the Amyloid beta biomarker test that was presented at AAIC. He told Bloomberg, “Our finding overturned the common belief that it wouldn’t be possible to estimate amyloid accumulation in the brain from blood. We’re now being chased by others, and the competition is intensifying.”

But Tanaka cautions that the test needs further study before
it is ready for clinical use, and that for now “it belongs in the hands of drug
developers and research laboratories,” Bloomberg reported.

Other Studies into Developing an Alzheimer’s Biomarker

Alzheimer’s is usually diagnosed after symptoms appear, such
as memory loss. To arrive at their diagnoses, doctors often rely on medical
history, brain imaging (MRI, CT), PET, and measurement of amyloid in spinal
fluid.

An article published on Alzforum, a website and news service dedicated to the research and treatment for Alzheimer’s and other related disorders, noted a study by King’s College London researchers who, using mass spectrometry, “found a panel of biomarkers that predicted with almost 90% accuracy whether cognitively normal people had a positive amyloid scan.”

Nicholas Ashton, PhD, neuroscientist and Wallenberg Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and first author of the King’s College study, explained that “Amyloid-burden and neurofilament light polypeptide (NFL) peptides were important in predicting Alzheimer’s, but alone they weren’t as predictable as when we combined them with novel proteins related to amyloid PET.”

The researchers published their study earlier this year in Science Advances. “Using an unbiased mass spectrometry approach, we have found and replicated with high accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity a plasma protein classifier reflecting amyloid-beta burden in a cognitively unimpaired cohort,” the researchers wrote.

“This is something that would be easy to incorporate into a screening test in a neurology clinic,” Brian Gordon, PhD, Assistant Professor of Radiology at Washington University’s Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, and an author of the study, stated in the news release.

These parallel studies into screening for Alzheimer’s by
researchers worldwide are intriguing. The favorable results suggest that
someday there may be a screen for Alzheimer’s using a clinical laboratory blood
test.

With Alzheimer’s affecting nearly six million Americans of all ages, such an assay would enable clinical laboratories to help many people.